Twin

by Allen Shawn (Viking; $25.95)

The author was considered “special” when he began composing music at an early age. His twin sister, Mary, was also special: gifted with numbers, given to kissing her right arm and to uncontrollable bursts of rage. When the twins were eight, Mary was abruptly whisked off to “camp,” never to live with the family again. In his earlier memoir, “Wish I Could Be There,” Shawn explored his many phobias and the ways they have affected his life; this strikingly generous family memoir about his sister’s autism is the other half of that story. “One wants to see a logic in disappearances and to know when one is losing things,” Shawn writes. “Even if, in the end, we get to keep nothing.” And yet this slim volume is less an anatomy of loss than an act of reclamation—a gentle but compelling argument that the fears and judgments that prevent us from recognizing Mary as kin can lead to our own self-mutilation. ♦

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